Not exactly true... That sports car likely has wider and larger diameter tires. This means that the tires have a larger area of rubber in contact with the road, and due to this, the brakes can apply more stopping force before the tire begins to slip (more than a similar car with smaller, skinnier tires). More stopping force = quicker deceleration. However, this really only applies in dry/wet but not puddling conditions. Wide tires tend to reduce traction in very wet/icy conditions. This is because the greater area makes it harder for the tire to push water out of the way and thus increases hydroplaning. Similarly, the tire tends to ride on top of the ice/snow instead of digging in and gripping the snow.
If you are going to use that logic, why stop there? An F150 would get pancaked by an International CXT. Oh, wait, that would still get smashed by a fully loaded big-rig......but the big rig would get completely annihilated by a Liebherr LTM 11200.9 mobile crane. I guess we should all just drive those.
Other drivers shouldn't have to slow down when you pull onto a road. If they do, then you should have waited for a larger opening. If you can't bear to wait for that larger opening, then you need to make better use of the right pedal. If that doesn't work, then either get a car with more horsepower or learn to be more patient.
Totally true. As a real-world example... many years ago the Twin Cities metro area had an EXTENSIVE street-car system. And it worked, really well in fact. But that wasn't very profitable for the companies that were trying to sell buses, *cough*GM*cough* so they bought up the street car system AND DISMANTLED IT. They did this just so they could sell more buses. We still have those buses, hundreds of them (well ok, new ones). And only in the last 10 years has there been an effort to replace some of the bus lines with light rail. The one line that is now in service has vastly exceeded ridership expectations, and there are a few others that are now on the drawing boards.
Except that "waste biomass" isn't really waste at all... normally it is spread out onto the fields where it is broken down and helps to fertilize the next crop. If we use that waste biomass to produce fuel, then we need more fertilizer than before, and guess what nearly all of our fertilizer is based on... petrochemicals. The same would apply to algae production. The algae need something to grow on too. Lots of light and water isn't enough. Bio fuels are not the answer.
How about you actually read the article you reference before you call people liars.
"We estimate there are nearly 700 million barrels of propane on Titan, said Nixon. "That is enough to fill six-billion 20-pound tanks of liquefied propane gas. It sounds like a huge amount, but that would satisfy total U.S. consumption of propane for only 18 months."
No, the conclusion is that we do not have enough information to answer the question. We don't know that they are the same, and neither do we know that they are different.
You are in the camp that believes that due to the fact that we cannot rule-out sentience, we should play it safe, and treat the strong AI as though it is actually sentient.
I personally think that it is VERY unlikely that we will accidentally create a sentient AI. It would be like accidentally inventing the human brain. Sure, its possible, but the chances are incredibly remote. We don't even know what imbues ourselves with sentience. As far as physics and biology are concerned, our bodies would work just as well without an actual sentient being observing the world from inside the body. The brain would still work, make decisions based on available information, and store memories. People could still walk around, and talk, and laugh, and build sky-scrapers, and yet have no true consciousness within. Thus we cannot explain consciousness, and our best guess at the present time (and it IS just that, a guess) is that it is an emergent property of the brain.
To me that still doesn't sound quite right. I think that there may be some interactions at quantum levels, or perhaps higher dimensions that provide the tools that give rise to sentience. But that is just my guess, and it is no better than anyone else's.
Exactly. A copy of you exists, with a separate consciousness. Your consciousness would not magically transfer itself to the new body. Your consciousness would be gone forever.
Um yeah, That is why 99% of the products listed on the website are various types of armor (such as ski-suits that absorb the impact of the gate poles for people who ski competitively). It just isn't strong enough to absorb the impact of bullets, etc. Or at least they aren't talking about it.
The previous poster was referring to the fact that the meanings of "liberal" and "conservative" in common parlance have reversed themselves from their original meaning. Originally, "liberal" meant pro-liberty ie: pro freedom. conservative referred to maintaining the preexisting governmental structure... ie the colonial type government of each individual state. Also, "democrat" referred to to being pro democracy, ie: governed by the people, thus small central government. And republican meant less power at the individual citizen, thus more centralized government.
I don't think it matters whether it is a hot jupiter or failed star. In either case, being that the orbit is so small, the smaller body should collide with the larger one after a short period of time (in astrological terms)
The orbits of the objects are not stable... not in astrological time scales anyway. Solar wind and tidal interaction is slowing all of the objects in the solar system and eventually everything not light enough to be held back by the pressure of solar wind itself will fall into the sun.
Go back and take statistics. It doesn't mean anything that we found a one in a billion planet after looking at 370. If we find several one in a billion planets after finding much less than several billion planets, THAT would be news. So far we just have a fortunate discovery of one such planet.
Yeah, Have you ever seen it in person? It is really bizarre. I scared a lizard into dropping its tail in my backyard once (inadvertently). After watching the tail myself for a minute or two, I picked it up and freaked out the neighbor lady with it.:-)
No. Well, it is a series of chemical reactions, but it isn't as complex as it sounds. The process to make fuel this way has been known for at least 30 years. If gas prices get above $10/gallon and stay there, you will probably see fuel generation factories get built all over. I mean, why buy fuel from other countries if you can plop down a nuclear power plant and attach a fuel generation factory next to it to use off-peak base-load to create fuel?
FYI, it is actually easier to extract CO2 from sea water than from the atmosphere. It also (as another poster mentioned) has less contaminants (such as oxygen)
The energy density of compressed hydrogen is too low to provide decent range for aircraft. Plus, it is harder to fit the tanks into the structure of the plane. It is easy to put unpressurized liquid fuel tanks in the wing of a fighter. Not so for high pressure hydrogen tanks. The plane would need to be built around the tank, instead of just fitting the tanks in convenient empty spaces.
High voltage also makes your capacitor much more likely to fail explosively should the dielectric break down. Shorting out such a capacitor would certainly be an interesting sight, so long as you are standing far enough away that is.
They're not making fuel onboard... trust me. RFTS's output is only about 20% jetfuel (the rest is a blend of methanol, ethanol, highher oils, and other fluid fules),
The production can be tweaked to produce whatever fuel you want. It doesn't have to be 20% jet fuel and 80% whatever else. It can be darn near 100% jet fuel. The dotty system is INTENDED to produce a variety of fuels, because it is easier than making the system produce one specific type of fuel.
and that takes a 10 story facility not including all the EXTRA equipment needed to handle the seawater, not the rediculoud retrofit, not the structural risks of having open doors under the water to the sea for intake/output...
The facility can be sized to whatever will reasonably fit on the ship. (yes at a corresponding reduction in production capacity, but some is better than none) And many ships already have openings to the ocean... that connect to ballast tanks. I'm sure it is a solved (long LONG! ago) engineering problem.
No, the navy will be making fuel on land. The benefit is not only cheap fuel, but it can be made, instead of delivered, to bases all over the world, solving logistical and security risks of moving large amounts of fuel.
What!? That is EXACTLY the system we have right now... have to ship the fuel from central locations (refineries) to places all over the world. You are just replacing "refinery" with "fuel generation plant". Cheap fuel has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with what the navy wants to do. It has everything to do with assuring that a carrier has a reliable source of fuel while in far away places.
Howver, to do this, the navy's going to need some serious partnership[s and licence agreements with Doty Energy or i think might face some legal action... They've got 60+ patents on this process...
Nope. Legally, the military can use whatever patents it wants, regardless of who owns them. It does have to pay them a licensing fee, but the patent holder doesn't get much say in what that will be. You may not like it, but that is the way it is. National security and all that.
Photosynthesis is not particularly efficient in terms of converting all of the light hitting it into chemical energy, ie: most of the light energy is wasted. So yes, it too is a waste.
In doty's case, they're using sequestered CO2 from coal output, so they're reusing CO2 that would already be released, and therefore can be 100% CO2 nuetral,
What part of "CO2 from coal output" did you not understand?. NOT CARBON NEUTRAL. Carbon neutral would be pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere/ocean ect... IE: carbon that was not sequestered in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Not exactly true... That sports car likely has wider and larger diameter tires. This means that the tires have a larger area of rubber in contact with the road, and due to this, the brakes can apply more stopping force before the tire begins to slip (more than a similar car with smaller, skinnier tires). More stopping force = quicker deceleration. However, this really only applies in dry/wet but not puddling conditions. Wide tires tend to reduce traction in very wet/icy conditions. This is because the greater area makes it harder for the tire to push water out of the way and thus increases hydroplaning. Similarly, the tire tends to ride on top of the ice/snow instead of digging in and gripping the snow.
If you are going to use that logic, why stop there? An F150 would get pancaked by an International CXT. Oh, wait, that would still get smashed by a fully loaded big-rig... ...but the big rig would get completely annihilated by a Liebherr LTM 11200.9 mobile crane. I guess we should all just drive those.
Other drivers shouldn't have to slow down when you pull onto a road. If they do, then you should have waited for a larger opening. If you can't bear to wait for that larger opening, then you need to make better use of the right pedal. If that doesn't work, then either get a car with more horsepower or learn to be more patient.
Totally true. As a real-world example... many years ago the Twin Cities metro area had an EXTENSIVE street-car system. And it worked, really well in fact. But that wasn't very profitable for the companies that were trying to sell buses, *cough*GM*cough* so they bought up the street car system AND DISMANTLED IT. They did this just so they could sell more buses. We still have those buses, hundreds of them (well ok, new ones). And only in the last 10 years has there been an effort to replace some of the bus lines with light rail. The one line that is now in service has vastly exceeded ridership expectations, and there are a few others that are now on the drawing boards.
Except that "waste biomass" isn't really waste at all... normally it is spread out onto the fields where it is broken down and helps to fertilize the next crop. If we use that waste biomass to produce fuel, then we need more fertilizer than before, and guess what nearly all of our fertilizer is based on... petrochemicals. The same would apply to algae production. The algae need something to grow on too. Lots of light and water isn't enough. Bio fuels are not the answer.
"We estimate there are nearly 700 million barrels of propane on Titan, said Nixon. "That is enough to fill six-billion 20-pound tanks of liquefied propane gas. It sounds like a huge amount, but that would satisfy total U.S. consumption of propane for only 18 months."
No, the conclusion is that we do not have enough information to answer the question. We don't know that they are the same, and neither do we know that they are different.
You are in the camp that believes that due to the fact that we cannot rule-out sentience, we should play it safe, and treat the strong AI as though it is actually sentient.
I personally think that it is VERY unlikely that we will accidentally create a sentient AI. It would be like accidentally inventing the human brain. Sure, its possible, but the chances are incredibly remote. We don't even know what imbues ourselves with sentience. As far as physics and biology are concerned, our bodies would work just as well without an actual sentient being observing the world from inside the body. The brain would still work, make decisions based on available information, and store memories. People could still walk around, and talk, and laugh, and build sky-scrapers, and yet have no true consciousness within. Thus we cannot explain consciousness, and our best guess at the present time (and it IS just that, a guess) is that it is an emergent property of the brain.
To me that still doesn't sound quite right. I think that there may be some interactions at quantum levels, or perhaps higher dimensions that provide the tools that give rise to sentience. But that is just my guess, and it is no better than anyone else's.
Exactly. A copy of you exists, with a separate consciousness. Your consciousness would not magically transfer itself to the new body. Your consciousness would be gone forever.
HEY! spoiler warning please! I haven't read that book yet jerk-o.
The parent did not say we should move the ISS, they were referring to building a new station at one of the Lagrange points.
Um yeah, That is why 99% of the products listed on the website are various types of armor (such as ski-suits that absorb the impact of the gate poles for people who ski competitively). It just isn't strong enough to absorb the impact of bullets, etc. Or at least they aren't talking about it.
The previous poster was referring to the fact that the meanings of "liberal" and "conservative" in common parlance have reversed themselves from their original meaning. Originally, "liberal" meant pro-liberty ie: pro freedom. conservative referred to maintaining the preexisting governmental structure... ie the colonial type government of each individual state. Also, "democrat" referred to to being pro democracy, ie: governed by the people, thus small central government. And republican meant less power at the individual citizen, thus more centralized government.
Except that in this experiment, something was opposing the acceleration of the cells, a viscous fluid. Thus is it NOT the same as microgravity.
Occam's Razor is just a rule of thumb. It doesn't prove that the simpler answer is the correct one.
I don't think it matters whether it is a hot jupiter or failed star. In either case, being that the orbit is so small, the smaller body should collide with the larger one after a short period of time (in astrological terms)
The orbits of the objects are not stable... not in astrological time scales anyway. Solar wind and tidal interaction is slowing all of the objects in the solar system and eventually everything not light enough to be held back by the pressure of solar wind itself will fall into the sun.
Go back and take statistics. It doesn't mean anything that we found a one in a billion planet after looking at 370. If we find several one in a billion planets after finding much less than several billion planets, THAT would be news. So far we just have a fortunate discovery of one such planet.
Yeah, Have you ever seen it in person? It is really bizarre. I scared a lizard into dropping its tail in my backyard once (inadvertently). After watching the tail myself for a minute or two, I picked it up and freaked out the neighbor lady with it. :-)
No. Well, it is a series of chemical reactions, but it isn't as complex as it sounds. The process to make fuel this way has been known for at least 30 years. If gas prices get above $10/gallon and stay there, you will probably see fuel generation factories get built all over. I mean, why buy fuel from other countries if you can plop down a nuclear power plant and attach a fuel generation factory next to it to use off-peak base-load to create fuel?
FYI, it is actually easier to extract CO2 from sea water than from the atmosphere. It also (as another poster mentioned) has less contaminants (such as oxygen)
The energy density of compressed hydrogen is too low to provide decent range for aircraft. Plus, it is harder to fit the tanks into the structure of the plane. It is easy to put unpressurized liquid fuel tanks in the wing of a fighter. Not so for high pressure hydrogen tanks. The plane would need to be built around the tank, instead of just fitting the tanks in convenient empty spaces.
High voltage also makes your capacitor much more likely to fail explosively should the dielectric break down. Shorting out such a capacitor would certainly be an interesting sight, so long as you are standing far enough away that is.
They're not making fuel onboard... trust me. RFTS's output is only about 20% jetfuel (the rest is a blend of methanol, ethanol, highher oils, and other fluid fules),
The production can be tweaked to produce whatever fuel you want. It doesn't have to be 20% jet fuel and 80% whatever else. It can be darn near 100% jet fuel. The dotty system is INTENDED to produce a variety of fuels, because it is easier than making the system produce one specific type of fuel.
and that takes a 10 story facility not including all the EXTRA equipment needed to handle the seawater, not the rediculoud retrofit, not the structural risks of having open doors under the water to the sea for intake/output...
The facility can be sized to whatever will reasonably fit on the ship. (yes at a corresponding reduction in production capacity, but some is better than none) And many ships already have openings to the ocean... that connect to ballast tanks. I'm sure it is a solved (long LONG! ago) engineering problem.
No, the navy will be making fuel on land. The benefit is not only cheap fuel, but it can be made, instead of delivered, to bases all over the world, solving logistical and security risks of moving large amounts of fuel.
What!? That is EXACTLY the system we have right now... have to ship the fuel from central locations (refineries) to places all over the world. You are just replacing "refinery" with "fuel generation plant". Cheap fuel has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with what the navy wants to do. It has everything to do with assuring that a carrier has a reliable source of fuel while in far away places.
Howver, to do this, the navy's going to need some serious partnership[s and licence agreements with Doty Energy or i think might face some legal action... They've got 60+ patents on this process...
Nope. Legally, the military can use whatever patents it wants, regardless of who owns them. It does have to pay them a licensing fee, but the patent holder doesn't get much say in what that will be. You may not like it, but that is the way it is. National security and all that.
Photosynthesis is not particularly efficient in terms of converting all of the light hitting it into chemical energy, ie: most of the light energy is wasted. So yes, it too is a waste.
In doty's case, they're using sequestered CO2 from coal output, so they're reusing CO2 that would already be released, and therefore can be 100% CO2 nuetral,
What part of "CO2 from coal output" did you not understand?. NOT CARBON NEUTRAL. Carbon neutral would be pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere/ocean ect... IE: carbon that was not sequestered in the first place.